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Check out Dave McClure's advice on the pitch if you haven't already: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/08/your-solution-is...
EDIT: patio's rewrite seems to nail the problem side pretty hard.
Severe weather affects millions worldwide and costs companies billions of dollars. Accurate and actionable weather analysis is a key business requirement in energy, defense, transportation, and numerous other industries.
Stormpulse (http://stormpulse.com) displays complex weather data intuitively, so that our customers can make critical business decisions based on it. Our competitors start with maps and then sprinkle in weather. We craft weather-centered presentations that are understandable and actionable. We're piloting the world's first human-consensus forecasting system. Check us out at: http://stormpulse.com or see the 5 minute tour we prepared for you at http://stormpulse.com/hypothetical-landing-page.
Our weather presentations regularly appear on CNN and are displayed on 750+ websites, including media sites such as USA Today and ThomasReuters, and internal dashboards at places like Boeing and the Mayo Clinic. We've had 18 million visitors in the last year. Hundreds of thousands of those visits are from decision-makers at Fortune 100 companies who depend on Stormpulse to protect their operations, equipment, and staff.
Stormpulse has paying customers. We are ready to fuel our continued growth with funding from smart, qualified, passionate investors. We're starting to contact interested parties, and would love to show your group what we're building. You can review a presentation I personalized for $FOO_INVESTMENT_GROUP at http://stormpulse.com/hypothetical-landing-page or contact me to discuss ways we can help each other.
Regards,
Points of note
1) Landing pages for your investors are a low-cost, high-reward way to say "I am serious about talking to YOU, Bob, not spamming everyone I could find" and they transition people from passive reader of your email into being actively engaged with you. Plus, cough, trackable cough split testable cough. (Incidentally, if you had a landing page, you wouldn't be showing me AdSense ads featuring a very bright background and a cute little Asian kid with glasses, and another ad telling me how easy it is to get a green card. I suppose it could be worse -- you could be showing me Evony ads. Either way, cute little Asian kids with glasses sort of distract from the general theme of saving people from horrible death that I was going for.)
2) Repeat after me: Stormpulse saves lives and property. Stormpulse saves lives and property. Stormpulse saves lives and property. After you've mentioned that a few times, you can talk about weather visualization. This is not being crass, any more than it is crass for an airbag manufacturer to say "Our product directly saved the lives of 12,000 people last year". It is your reason for being. Do not be afraid to sell it.
3) I'm sure you and Brad are wonderful people and you likely did wonderful things at your previous jobs, but look, you've got the Fortune 100 eating out of the palm of your hand to protect their lives and property. That is the critically important qualification. Next to that, "We built a cool CMS once" sounds like "And by the way, my mother really loved the drawings I made when I was six".
P.S. If I wanted to show that I was not faceless corporate, I would start the letter with an arresting sentence like so:
Severe weather kills people and breaks things.
A sentence like that grabs the reader by the neck. Some people might say its a bit aggressive. By my lights, heck yes, it is aggressive. We make no bones about it, we are picking a fight, and we want you to be on the side of humanity against the death and destruction caused by severe weather.
Here's my rewrite. Severe weather affects millions worldwide and costs companies billions of dollars. Accurate and actionable weather analysis is a key business requirement in energy, defense, transportation, and numerous other industries. Stormpulse ( http://stormpulse.com ) displays complex weather data intuitively, so that our customers can make critical business decisions based on it. Our competitors start with m…
Check out Dave McClure's advice on the pitch if you haven't already: http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/08/your-solution-is...
Dave hammers the 'tell me the problem' side. Does this pitch do that? EDIT: patio's rewrite seems to nail the problem side pretty hard.
Problem-oriented: Severe weather kills people and breaks things. Our customers entrust their lives and property to Stormpulse. Its us and humanity versus death and destruction. Join our side.
Solution-oriented: We made a really cool AJAX/Flash mashup which combines a bunch of publicly available weather data sources. We'd like more money to develop a bunch of awesome features we have in the pipeline. How about it?
They're equally true. They're by no means equally effective.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dave hammers the 'tell me the problem' side. Does this pitch do that? EDIT: patio's rewrite seems to nail the problem side pretty hard.
Two alternatives in 15 seconds. Problem-oriented: Severe weather kills people and breaks things. Our customers entrust their lives and property to Stormpulse. Its us and humanity versus death and destruction. Join our side. Solution-oriented: We made a really cool AJAX/Flash mashup which combines a bunch of publicly available weather data sources. We'd like more money to develop a bunch of awesome features we have in…
Stormpulse.com is intuitive weather display. We tame complex weather data and visualize it in context. Other weather sites begin with maps and add weather data. We craft weather-centered presentations that foster understanding. And we're piloting the world's first human-consensus forecasting system. We're building Stormpulse to reduce the costs of severe weather, which affects millions worldwide. Our weather maps hav…
The problem with the each month aspect is that we have obviously had months that were extremely busy and others that were quite tame. Is that intellectually dishonest then, or not?
Here's my rewrite. Severe weather affects millions worldwide and costs companies billions of dollars. Accurate and actionable weather analysis is a key business requirement in energy, defense, transportation, and numerous other industries. Stormpulse ( http://stormpulse.com ) displays complex weather data intuitively, so that our customers can make critical business decisions based on it. Our competitors start with m…
@patio11 - I'm tempted to send you our elevator for analysis. Anyone interested in 'HN Elevator: Rate my pitch' ?
IMO, you ought to add regular weather to your site, too - people are more likely to see your data if they're visiting your site for information regularly already.
Weather.com is for knowing whether you should carry an umbrella when you go to the office tomorrow. Stormpulse is for knowing whether you will still have an office to go to. When serious professionals need to make critical decisions to protect lives and property, they trust us to give them the data they need in a form they can use.
Stormpulse: We Don't Even Have An Icon For "Partly Cloudy"